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Singular Images: Essays on Remarkable Photographs
Spanning 170 years, from William Henry Fox Talbot's first negative to Jeff Wall's latest constructed tableau, Singular Images collects thought-provoking essays on individual photographs, one image per writer. The essayists consider, sometimes in highly personal ways, the artist's intention, their own response, the work's technical complexities, its historical context or its formal properties. Each text captures a sense of how challenging it is to create a perfect single piece. Art photography has been increasingly well-surveyed in recent years, but individual works have rarely been written about at length, perhaps because of lingering doubt that a single photograph can command the kind of sustained attention often given to individual paintings or sculptures. Singular Images is a lively inquiry into the value of analyzing individual photographs, and it persuasively encourages the reader to engage at length and in depth with one remarkable piece at a time. With its broad scope and diverse range of issues, it can also be read as an informal--and thoroughly entertaining--introduction to art photography. Featuring essays by some of the most brilliant critical minds in the field, including David Campany on Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp, Darsie Alexander on Nan Goldin and Liz Jobey on Diane Arbus.
- GenresPhotographyArt
128 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2005
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March 21, 2017
This was a great book consisting of a series of essays on eleven (mostly) iconic photographers via a discussion of one of their photographs (which is of course reproduced in the book).
The essays were almost always engrossing, and for me at least, eye-opening in terms of providing context on the lives of many photographers that I'm familiar with but didn't know that much about. I knew about Julia Margaret Cameron since childhood - one Christmas I was given a datebook illustrated with reproductions of her wonderful, often dreamy photos - and have seen her work since then in museums or reproduced in books. I didn't know that much about this remarkable woman until I read the essay about her in the book under discussion, which somehow brought her to life, by mentioning unexpected details about her - her determination, lack of concern if her fingers were covered with chemical stains from printing photos (exactly how a painter or print maker would be unconcerned if their clothes & fingers had paint or ink stains) the fact that she was diminutive in size.
The essay on Diane Arbus was likewise enlightening - her remarks about her childhood, and how photography might have been her way of breaking out of a stifling family/milieu. The essay on Nan Goldin described how her work mostly of her artist friends in the Village or LES, became a memorial to a time and place, as so many of them later died of AIDS. The discussion of Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp's photograph "Dust Breeding" was most enlightening - I know the work that the glass panel ended up becoming part of, and I am familiar with Surrealism, but it was truly interesting to find out that the dust was being in a way "cultivated" by the artist Duchamp, as a random assemblage of dust, which was later encased within the glass panels to become part of the iconic work known as "The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (La mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même), most often called The Large Glass (Le Grand Verre)" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bri.... I thought the discussion of the first photo in the book, of one of the earliest known photographs, William Henry Fox Talbot's "Latticed Window" of 1835, extremely interesting as it described what the process consisted of - almost a print of an image of a window without a lens, which has been fading for over a hundred years, until it is now barely discernible. The next photo discussed, Charles Negre's "Chimney Sweeps Walking" of 1852 is the first photo in the book that looks like a recognizable photo of something real, in this case, three young chimney sweeps walking along a bridge. Although they look like they are walking, they were posed to look like they are walking since the exposure times in those days were so lengthy. Also, there was much handwork done on the negative by the photographer afterwards, which greatly altered the look of the photo, to make the image of the three youths stand out more make them seem more three-dimensional, almost like a frieze. The first photo - of the window, with no subsequent intervention to change any area of the image, mirrors in a way, one of the final photos discussed, that of the "Aegean Sea, Pilion" of 1990 by Hiroshi Sugimoto, which also seems at least to be a straightforward photo of a featureless, horizon-less mist-shrouded greyish seascape. I guess these are "realistic" images of things as they are, one, the window, almost the progenitor of the ensuing trillions of snapshots including digital photos/selfies ever taken, the other, the culmination almost of the idea of photographing a seemingly banal or uninteresting thing, such as a window or a featureless seascape, with only a few small whitecaps breaking the surface of the wavelet ridged sea.
The other, or another, photographic trend was that of producing an atmospheric image, to rival an atmospheric painting perhaps, such as those of Cameron, and later Weston, Steichen, Steiglitz, and so forth - the opposite in a way of the "selfie" or purely "real" photo or snapshot. Today, any of us can achieve similar effects using various digital filters or techniques, rather than laboring in a darkroom, etc. The final photo in the book, Jeff Wall's 2004-5 "A view from an apartment" appears to be a spontaneous snapshot of a typical young person's apartment, a tableau with the usual IKEA or thrift shop finds furniture, with the occupants busy doing things people might do in their apartment - leaving plates around, reading magazines, ironing - but it is actually a carefully posed/staged photographed, very elaborately lighted, and extremely sharp - almost hyper-realistically so. Wall presented this photo in a giant light box format, so that the figures of the apartment occupants were nearly life-size and the image glowing on the museum or gallery wall, a giant bright back-lit transparency. Was this his way of wryly commenting on present-day banality - the daily grind that many peoples' lives consist of - by enlarging it and presenting it as a shining over life-size image? Or is the light-box mounted super size slide of the image which contains a further bright, though nearly twilight, view through a window into the Vancouver docklands, commenting on all photography as being potentially intrusive, a look into other peoples' lives, how they live, what's revealed by examining their images in photographs, since Wall's image presented via a huge light-box installation, is almost like a plate-glass tableau or store-front image - decor - a glimpse that's permitted into a (supposedly) private world (although the girls in the photo were hired via a want ad, and interestingly also given a budget and asked to furnish the apartment, down to buying linens, other decor - which was in reality, a set). The "atmosphere" portrayed is one of modernity or how a young person's ordinary apartment might look today - however, nothing in the image is "real" in that the "occupants" are really actors, and the objects in the room are all purchased on purpose for the image, not to actually own by the actors (although they did purchase them, with Wall's money). This isn't a fictional photograph, although the scene (of supposedly two roomates in their own apartment) is fictional, the photograph itself is a hyper-realistic and hyper-sharp image of a set exactly as a director might photograph or videograph a theatrical scene within a highly realistic set for a TV show or film. Wall's photo is interesting, filled with visual detail, and well-composed - I suppose the questions it raises, as to what can we believe, if we are confronted with a photograph of seemingly a the quotidian day-to-day humdrum existence, which is actually completely artificial, is the point of the exercise: Not to believe everything we see, that the real sometimes is actually artifice.
I thought Bill Brandt's photo of 1937 "A Snicket, Halifax" together with Martin Parr's "Jubilee Street Party, Elland, Yorkshire" of 40 years later - almost comprise a pair - of industrial and de-industrializing England. Neither image contains people, the latter image of the seemingly deserted street party with the pathetic multi-tiered cake presiding over seemingly soggy plates of food, a monument to a fiasco, perhaps an anti-celebration given that industry was departing England at that time, the former image - Brandt's incredible photograph of a steep gleaming black cobblestone path with a looming mill, that once was the world's biggest producer of carpet, leading to a leaden patch of sky, how many industrial workers must have clambered over that roadway en route to the mill. Their absence, or the image of the mill to the right, perhaps the point of this photograph is to question their difficult lives, clambering up that cobblestone, slick pathway, into the looming mill - in which they were presumably - and then back down the path each night. Finally, the essay on Thomas Struth's "San Zaccaria, Venice" (1995) deals with the reverence the two tourists seen in the image gazing at Bellini's renowned altarpiece, looking at art as opposed to the decline of churchgoing, whether the way we look at art today, including of course religious-themed art, and the rise of museums in general, has replaced or supplanted or is a substitute for the veneration people once felt for religion/religious art/objects. I doubt it, since I think people mostly admire ideas, technique, the work that goes into producing works of art, including religious-themed art, in museums, rather than considering the religious subject matter per se. So although people queue up to see "blockbuster" art exhibits which can become the subject of endless buzz, the experience is usually mostly akin to seeing a popular film or play - it's a cultural experience, but usually not a spiritual one. It is edifying, and museums give people a visually pleasing place to go, and also function in a positive way on many other levels, but I doubt if museums today have supplanted the experience for a "believer" of viewing a church, mosque, or temple, or actually attending services. Also, a religious person derives comfort or a sense of communion or community, even if a place of worship is devoid of decor - the spiritual experience is very possible without too many external "props." (Jesus' Sermon on the Mount was given outside on a hillside.) So, I don't think the rise of museum going "fills in" for the decline in church going; I think pursuing self-improvement and cultural interests is a positive feature of present-day life - probably the obsession with the internet/going on line, is related more to self-improvement (than to escapism). People view museum-going as related to education, or being educated - and that, probably more than anything else, is what is probably driving the interest in museums/galleries. Church on the other hand, unless one is a believer, isn't a way to actually "learn new things" or become "more educated" at least IMO it isn't - unless one is interested in Scripture and biblical exegesis/discussion. The lack of dynamism, of the church being stuck in an earlier era, and inability to see it for what it is, which is a way for people to connect with the divine (if they happen to believe in the existence of the divine in the first place) and with other believers, that is, a community, is what is probably driving down church attendance. That and the debacle of the 20th century with the devastation of total war, genocide, holocaust - may have led some to doubt the efficacy of religious teachings, given what happened after about 2,000 years of supposedly positive religious influence on humanity. Also, the more different information that is instantly available - starting with radio, television, the internet, tapes, CDs, and so forth, and many times, free of charge and conveniently accessible at home - the more sated or even, over-sated, people become, or constantly demand more and more new things, new information, new cultural "discoveries" - again, this is the exact opposite of what church offers, since the same message in slightly different renderings is delivered week after week. However, for a religious person, the repetition and seeming monotony, the chanting, is exactly what they seek - it's all simply a way to reach a spiritual/edified state and feel like they've actually "connected" somehow with the divine, while everyone else around them is doing the same thing: Mass/prayer.
I recommend this book to anyone interested in photography - a great idea for a book on photography and each essay does give many insights into photography in general and the lives of the photographers in particular, as well as what went into the specific photograph under discussion.
The essays were almost always engrossing, and for me at least, eye-opening in terms of providing context on the lives of many photographers that I'm familiar with but didn't know that much about. I knew about Julia Margaret Cameron since childhood - one Christmas I was given a datebook illustrated with reproductions of her wonderful, often dreamy photos - and have seen her work since then in museums or reproduced in books. I didn't know that much about this remarkable woman until I read the essay about her in the book under discussion, which somehow brought her to life, by mentioning unexpected details about her - her determination, lack of concern if her fingers were covered with chemical stains from printing photos (exactly how a painter or print maker would be unconcerned if their clothes & fingers had paint or ink stains) the fact that she was diminutive in size.
The essay on Diane Arbus was likewise enlightening - her remarks about her childhood, and how photography might have been her way of breaking out of a stifling family/milieu. The essay on Nan Goldin described how her work mostly of her artist friends in the Village or LES, became a memorial to a time and place, as so many of them later died of AIDS. The discussion of Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp's photograph "Dust Breeding" was most enlightening - I know the work that the glass panel ended up becoming part of, and I am familiar with Surrealism, but it was truly interesting to find out that the dust was being in a way "cultivated" by the artist Duchamp, as a random assemblage of dust, which was later encased within the glass panels to become part of the iconic work known as "The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (La mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même), most often called The Large Glass (Le Grand Verre)" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bri.... I thought the discussion of the first photo in the book, of one of the earliest known photographs, William Henry Fox Talbot's "Latticed Window" of 1835, extremely interesting as it described what the process consisted of - almost a print of an image of a window without a lens, which has been fading for over a hundred years, until it is now barely discernible. The next photo discussed, Charles Negre's "Chimney Sweeps Walking" of 1852 is the first photo in the book that looks like a recognizable photo of something real, in this case, three young chimney sweeps walking along a bridge. Although they look like they are walking, they were posed to look like they are walking since the exposure times in those days were so lengthy. Also, there was much handwork done on the negative by the photographer afterwards, which greatly altered the look of the photo, to make the image of the three youths stand out more make them seem more three-dimensional, almost like a frieze. The first photo - of the window, with no subsequent intervention to change any area of the image, mirrors in a way, one of the final photos discussed, that of the "Aegean Sea, Pilion" of 1990 by Hiroshi Sugimoto, which also seems at least to be a straightforward photo of a featureless, horizon-less mist-shrouded greyish seascape. I guess these are "realistic" images of things as they are, one, the window, almost the progenitor of the ensuing trillions of snapshots including digital photos/selfies ever taken, the other, the culmination almost of the idea of photographing a seemingly banal or uninteresting thing, such as a window or a featureless seascape, with only a few small whitecaps breaking the surface of the wavelet ridged sea.
The other, or another, photographic trend was that of producing an atmospheric image, to rival an atmospheric painting perhaps, such as those of Cameron, and later Weston, Steichen, Steiglitz, and so forth - the opposite in a way of the "selfie" or purely "real" photo or snapshot. Today, any of us can achieve similar effects using various digital filters or techniques, rather than laboring in a darkroom, etc. The final photo in the book, Jeff Wall's 2004-5 "A view from an apartment" appears to be a spontaneous snapshot of a typical young person's apartment, a tableau with the usual IKEA or thrift shop finds furniture, with the occupants busy doing things people might do in their apartment - leaving plates around, reading magazines, ironing - but it is actually a carefully posed/staged photographed, very elaborately lighted, and extremely sharp - almost hyper-realistically so. Wall presented this photo in a giant light box format, so that the figures of the apartment occupants were nearly life-size and the image glowing on the museum or gallery wall, a giant bright back-lit transparency. Was this his way of wryly commenting on present-day banality - the daily grind that many peoples' lives consist of - by enlarging it and presenting it as a shining over life-size image? Or is the light-box mounted super size slide of the image which contains a further bright, though nearly twilight, view through a window into the Vancouver docklands, commenting on all photography as being potentially intrusive, a look into other peoples' lives, how they live, what's revealed by examining their images in photographs, since Wall's image presented via a huge light-box installation, is almost like a plate-glass tableau or store-front image - decor - a glimpse that's permitted into a (supposedly) private world (although the girls in the photo were hired via a want ad, and interestingly also given a budget and asked to furnish the apartment, down to buying linens, other decor - which was in reality, a set). The "atmosphere" portrayed is one of modernity or how a young person's ordinary apartment might look today - however, nothing in the image is "real" in that the "occupants" are really actors, and the objects in the room are all purchased on purpose for the image, not to actually own by the actors (although they did purchase them, with Wall's money). This isn't a fictional photograph, although the scene (of supposedly two roomates in their own apartment) is fictional, the photograph itself is a hyper-realistic and hyper-sharp image of a set exactly as a director might photograph or videograph a theatrical scene within a highly realistic set for a TV show or film. Wall's photo is interesting, filled with visual detail, and well-composed - I suppose the questions it raises, as to what can we believe, if we are confronted with a photograph of seemingly a the quotidian day-to-day humdrum existence, which is actually completely artificial, is the point of the exercise: Not to believe everything we see, that the real sometimes is actually artifice.
I thought Bill Brandt's photo of 1937 "A Snicket, Halifax" together with Martin Parr's "Jubilee Street Party, Elland, Yorkshire" of 40 years later - almost comprise a pair - of industrial and de-industrializing England. Neither image contains people, the latter image of the seemingly deserted street party with the pathetic multi-tiered cake presiding over seemingly soggy plates of food, a monument to a fiasco, perhaps an anti-celebration given that industry was departing England at that time, the former image - Brandt's incredible photograph of a steep gleaming black cobblestone path with a looming mill, that once was the world's biggest producer of carpet, leading to a leaden patch of sky, how many industrial workers must have clambered over that roadway en route to the mill. Their absence, or the image of the mill to the right, perhaps the point of this photograph is to question their difficult lives, clambering up that cobblestone, slick pathway, into the looming mill - in which they were presumably - and then back down the path each night. Finally, the essay on Thomas Struth's "San Zaccaria, Venice" (1995) deals with the reverence the two tourists seen in the image gazing at Bellini's renowned altarpiece, looking at art as opposed to the decline of churchgoing, whether the way we look at art today, including of course religious-themed art, and the rise of museums in general, has replaced or supplanted or is a substitute for the veneration people once felt for religion/religious art/objects. I doubt it, since I think people mostly admire ideas, technique, the work that goes into producing works of art, including religious-themed art, in museums, rather than considering the religious subject matter per se. So although people queue up to see "blockbuster" art exhibits which can become the subject of endless buzz, the experience is usually mostly akin to seeing a popular film or play - it's a cultural experience, but usually not a spiritual one. It is edifying, and museums give people a visually pleasing place to go, and also function in a positive way on many other levels, but I doubt if museums today have supplanted the experience for a "believer" of viewing a church, mosque, or temple, or actually attending services. Also, a religious person derives comfort or a sense of communion or community, even if a place of worship is devoid of decor - the spiritual experience is very possible without too many external "props." (Jesus' Sermon on the Mount was given outside on a hillside.) So, I don't think the rise of museum going "fills in" for the decline in church going; I think pursuing self-improvement and cultural interests is a positive feature of present-day life - probably the obsession with the internet/going on line, is related more to self-improvement (than to escapism). People view museum-going as related to education, or being educated - and that, probably more than anything else, is what is probably driving the interest in museums/galleries. Church on the other hand, unless one is a believer, isn't a way to actually "learn new things" or become "more educated" at least IMO it isn't - unless one is interested in Scripture and biblical exegesis/discussion. The lack of dynamism, of the church being stuck in an earlier era, and inability to see it for what it is, which is a way for people to connect with the divine (if they happen to believe in the existence of the divine in the first place) and with other believers, that is, a community, is what is probably driving down church attendance. That and the debacle of the 20th century with the devastation of total war, genocide, holocaust - may have led some to doubt the efficacy of religious teachings, given what happened after about 2,000 years of supposedly positive religious influence on humanity. Also, the more different information that is instantly available - starting with radio, television, the internet, tapes, CDs, and so forth, and many times, free of charge and conveniently accessible at home - the more sated or even, over-sated, people become, or constantly demand more and more new things, new information, new cultural "discoveries" - again, this is the exact opposite of what church offers, since the same message in slightly different renderings is delivered week after week. However, for a religious person, the repetition and seeming monotony, the chanting, is exactly what they seek - it's all simply a way to reach a spiritual/edified state and feel like they've actually "connected" somehow with the divine, while everyone else around them is doing the same thing: Mass/prayer.
I recommend this book to anyone interested in photography - a great idea for a book on photography and each essay does give many insights into photography in general and the lives of the photographers in particular, as well as what went into the specific photograph under discussion.
February 25, 2025
Picked this book up to read the essay about Nan Goldin’s photograph “The Hug” but was then drawn into all of the other essays, as well. I haven’t read any photographic essays since undergrad and this book was a reminder for how incredible this artistic field truly is and how many different ways the medium can be used. I’ve been picking up my camera specifically for travels and nighttime outings lately but I’m inspired to use it more intentionally again.
May 17, 2020
The very premise of the makes an important point: so much of photography is presented as a series, while the singular image-- the photo that stands on its own without context or a number of other related photos on the same subject-- is rarely rarefied. Although some of the essays miss this point and discuss how a single image stands out in a series of images by the artist, the attention on one photograph as a stand-alone work of art is refreshing.
In addition, none of these photos are splashy or what a lay person would want to have on their walls. Reading about what experts see in an image that does not have obvious (and therefore, usually, predictably banal) attraction opens the mind to a new way of seeing. Well, that is when you don't get the keen sense that even the artist is saying, "okay... not at all what I intended, but sure."
In addition, none of these photos are splashy or what a lay person would want to have on their walls. Reading about what experts see in an image that does not have obvious (and therefore, usually, predictably banal) attraction opens the mind to a new way of seeing. Well, that is when you don't get the keen sense that even the artist is saying, "okay... not at all what I intended, but sure."
November 17, 2020
Remarkable how much there is to say about someones picture!
August 16, 2012
There were some good essays in here. Obviously, some were better than others. I enjoyed learning about Thomas Struth and want to see more of his work. Nan Goldin's work is also interesting and I want to see the slideshow The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. Martin Parr and Bill Brandt are two I want to investigate further as well.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews